Dr. William Lane Craig, research professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, Calif., has dismissed the American Atheists' 50 year anniversary convention as "nothing but posturing," arguing that their intellectual arguments against theism do not hold up.

"Their motto '50 years of reason' is nothing but posturing. It's an attempt to present themselves as intellectual and that their atheism is based in reason, when in fact that is far from the truth," Craig, who has written over thirty books on theology and philosophy and frequently debates atheist scholars, said on Monday in a phone interview with The Christian Post.

American Atheists, the largest secular group in America, which supports civil rights for atheists, will kick off their 2013 National Convention on Thursday, featuring three days of speakers.

"The 2013 National Convention will host hundreds of fellow atheists, plus vendors, speakers, comedians, entertainers, an art show and silent auction, and much more," the convention website says as it promises that attendees will hear from prominent atheist figures, such as professor & philosopher A.C. Grayling, Congressman Pete Stark, musician Jay Jay French, and others.

I was reading a Yale study today about the Tea Party and climate change denial. It seems the more information you give them, the more entrenched their beliefs become. Craig has debated many of the the leading atheists of our time and either not heard or understood a word they said.

He is now so deeply dug in, he thinks he won the debates. He is a master of logical fallacies and only wins debates if they are judged on decibels alone. And his followers also think he won all those debates. It’s like the climate change study. The more information we present, the less reachable these fundies become.

I marvel that our species has survived. How did our ancestors have the sense to come in out of the raining brimstone and fail to pass it on?

William Lane Craig. THE guy to go to if you want to find out why the Israelite genocide of the other tribes Canaan in the Old Testament was a beautiful and wondrous thing, totally misunderstood and misrepresented by all those nasty atheists.

rjohn19 is onto something regarding how many people are able to sustain cognitive dissonance when the notions to which they exhibit faith (usually due to our tendencies towards loyalty and respect for authority) are challenged by evidence and reason, and if we seek to change the political clime (e.g. that secularism is freedom from religious persecution, rather than freedom to choose which denomination of Christianity one follows) we need to let the psychology behind theistic faith inform our methods.

Regarding Dr. Craig I haven’t been able to listen to much of him, but of those segments I’ve listened to, he accuses non-theists in general and specific freethinking speakers (such as Dawkins) of being unreasonable or illogical or any number of other criticisms, but I’ve never heard him once back his claims by citing points or incidents. Craig seems to presume that his authority is enough to validate whatever he says, and perhaps to his intended audience (the proverbial choir) that is enough.

‘……and see whether the arguments for theism are better that the arguments for atheism.’

Here Craig displays his disingenuous nature. He’s pretending that there are two roughly equal positions which both need to be argued for. Wrong. An atheist has no burden of proof. On the contrary, it is up to the theist to provide evidence for their beliefs, since they are the ones making the claims. As for the atheist, “That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”

I find it amusing the way the apologists dismiss our arguments while ignoring all the stories written by all the former religious who describe how these arguments have opened their eyes. Just religion’s way of whistling past the meme grave yard.

Thirty books? Why does he need thirty books to convince anyone. Sounds like he is failing to get his message across. Maybe he is a useless writer. Maybe he can’t really convince himself and hopes to brainwash himself by repeatedly typing out the same old tawdry stuff. Or just maybe there are a lot of desperate fools out there willing to part with their hard earned cash yet not realising that they are funding a fraud who can sit back and let the cash spill into his lap. Easy money. If you can’t produce a buttoned up watertight convincing case in one volume then one of the above propositions must be true. I find it staggering that this charlatan has earned the rank of professor.

Its lovely to see him grapple with the statistics and try and hand-wave them away. Normally the polished, consumate con-artist, he hasn’t got his act together here. Seeing him come out of his comfort zone (normally a sort of multiple philosophical plate spinning act that allows maximum misdirection opportunity) into the area of verifiable facts tells me he’s losing his cool.

His pleas for Christian calm could crumble with real statistics and forcing him to look over the wall at an increasingly sane Europe.

The Christian professor explained that Asian Americans make up some of the largest non-religious proportions in America, concentrated largely in the Pacific Northwest, and said that American churches can still welcome and reach out to them.

“This suggests that a lot of these folks may come from non-Christian cultures, in China, Japan and elsewhere. In this case, it is not so much that they have left the Christian faith, but they never had it.”

Dr. William Lane Craig, research professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, Calif., has dismissed the American Atheists’ 50 year anniversary convention as “nothing but posturing,” arguing that their intellectual arguments against theism do not hold up.

OK, Smarty Pants ! Let’s take Craig’s so-called First Cause, supposedly proving God. Now if you are honest then the first cause also applies to this God, and the first cause of that first cause….. and so all the way back. But of course, it’s just so convenient that Craig’s God doesn’t have to have a first cause, – by definition ! First define your God into existence then use chop logic to justify His existence !

Well I must admit I’m no intellectual like Craig, but here’s my argument against the existence of Craig’s God.

Some 30,000 children die every day of poverty related issues, and Craig’s God does nothing. Not very intellectual, I admit. But I think a pretty convincing line to take !

I recommend watching Craig debate Bart Ehrman on the question of the historicity of the Resurrection. His dumbfounded silence at the end of the debate is the golden moment of truth for biblical claims for supernatural intervention.

I recommend watching Craig debate Bart Ehrman on the question of the historicity of the Resurrection. His dumbfounded silence at the end of the debate is the golden moment of truth for biblical claims for supernatural intervention.

However listening to the name orally, or allowing for American spelling, the similar sounding FRENCH word, is very appropriate for a talk by Lane Craig being presented as intellectual debate at Perdu University! :-

WLC spends his life defending the existence of a murderer, rapist, mysogynist, misanthrope, child abuser, and abortionist. In any society which had pretentions of civilized society such an entity would be considered somewhat less pleasant than Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin combined. I do not consider anything that Craig says to have any value whatsoever.

I see from your link, they are exporting their WHIZZDUMB to the Ukraine!

After the fall of communism in the 90’s, many evangelical leaders left the country. The Talbot-Kyiv extension in the Ukraine is designed to strengthen the church in this strategic region by training and retaining key leaders.

No wonder there are students there full of fundamentalist biblical ignorance!

The man continuously reminds me of the the Duke of Devonshire and the King of France aboard Huckleberry Finn’s raft on the Mississippi. Snake oil salesmen all the way through. Now those characters very nearly got tarred and feathered, and who would have felt much sympathy? In Craig’s case, this professor of philosophy should be publicly pilloried for the disinformation he puts out.

I watched Quine’s link to the historical veracity of the resurection versus Bart Ehrman. Craig was full of bluster, but blown well out to sea ! I suspect my image of the snake in the Garden of Eden will forever have the head of someone who looks very like Craig.

Now who was that character in The Lord of the Rings? Ah yes, – WORMTONGUE.

Such hypocrisy coming from an organisation that made such a fuss about the year 2000. Still what else would we expect from the most unscrupulous of all pseudo intellectual apologists. I hope that wasn’t too ad hominem.

“Research professor of Philosophy”
If all the money wasted on the “research” done by this idiot were invested in research in dental caries, the inhabitants of this world would have very healthy teeth. I’ve seen some videos of this guy on YouTube and I’ve never heard and seen such enormous flow of confusing words just to say nothing. His college must be very impressed with his pseudo-intellectual style to keep his research grant going.